Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are being championed by many governments, OEMs, and some startup companies and entrepreneurs. It is expected that many BEVs will be deployed within a year or so in US and other countries to ascertain the potential viability of the vehicles for personal transportation. However, range anxiety is still major hurdle for electric vehicle (EV) adoption. Cars.com surveyed 1000 prospective buyers and found that 54% were very concerned about range anxiety they might have in pure electric cars. These prospective customers also did not appear to be patient about charging. Because of the generally short driving range of BEVs, ready accessibility of charging facilities and/or battery-supply infrastructure will be a prerequisite for developing a mature BEV-based transportation system. In addition, more careful planning on the part of the drivers will be helpful to avoid being stranded due to drained batteries. A stranded BEV not only is an inconvenience to the vehicle occupants and can pose potential danger to them, but can also lead to traffic congestion, collisions and other problems.
There are also potentially significant traffic management problems associated with BEV stopping in traffic with drained batteries. Suppose, for example, that in New York City where 750,000 cars and truck driver drive every day 5% of the vehicles are BEVs. If on an expectantly cold day where BEV energy consumption is high, 5% of the vehicles are stranded. There would be 1875 stalled vehicles. Even one stalled vehicle can delay 75,000 motorists, 1875 could create super-jams that could take days to unravel.
Currently, some EVs have LCD displays in gauge clusters and center stacks, that advise drivers on how much charge is remaining, and the time required to fully charge. They also display trip information and energy routing, and do double duty to control vehicle climate and infotainment settings. Although they estimate how many miles the driver can still travel without any measure of the accuracy of the estimate, none of them shows the drivers the likelihood of reaching the destination by different routing or different behaviors, and the trade-off options they get to traverse the route. A lot of drivers will be impatient when stopping and charging on their way, and would rather wait until they reach their destination, so they can make good use of their time while the BEV is charging.
It is desirable to avoid being stranded with appropriate planning when driving a BEV. There are other factors that can be accounted for trip planning that impact the driving range. They include heater or air-condition use, media players on or off, tire pressure, terrain gradient, ambient temperature, wind velocity, the choices of routes, etc. A driver could acquire the necessary information and make plans while driving the vehicle. Current route guidance systems lack an effective way to present the changing accuracy of the energy consumption forecast in a way that is easy to understand and provides the driver information about the accuracy of the estimate, and how the range can be improved by making the correct driving decisions.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,121,802 discusses methods and apparatus to provide a power-line communication method, a power-line communication device, and a power-line communication system, which can make communication with high communication efficiency even when the condition of a power line is changed. A noise detection process is performed in correspondence to a time domain synchronized with a power source cycle of a power line. A communication channel decision process of generating communication channels in the time domain is performed on the basis of the noise condition detected. Tone maps are prepared for the communication channels generated. When the preparation of the tone maps is ended, the tone maps are transmitted to a destination PLC and data are transmitted and received between a transmission-side PLC and a reception-side PLC by the use of the same tone map.